


Pygmalion

by Everlind



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Nude Modeling, gratuitous worship of Shishido's anatomy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-29
Updated: 2013-09-29
Packaged: 2017-12-27 23:00:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/984665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everlind/pseuds/Everlind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thin. Enough so to show ribs and hipbones that arch like a challenge, even sitting. Wonderful, boney wrists and an exquisite set of clavicles. Ankles the way you sometimes see in children, almost delicate and fragile seeming. This, while nothing about him is fragile. In fact, there's strong delineations where muscle sits on his body, all lean, tough strength. There are scabs on his left knee, but other than that he has smooth, flawless skin that still holds a promise of brilliant, sunny afternoons. The tops of his thighs and hips are noticeably paler, besides the dark trail of hairs starting under his navel, going down and-</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Draw.</i></p><p> </p><p>He has to draw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pygmalion

**Author's Note:**

> Before you begin, please note that I do not intend to finish this in the near future, if at all. Therefore it will end abruptly in the middle of a scene. That's all there is. Just a head's up.

 

Ohtori Choutarou is nineteen years old and a virgin.

Apparently this is a  _Big Deal_.

To other people that is. It never particularly bothers Ohtori until sex and the having of it (or in his case, not) turns up in a conversation. Problem being, when you are nineteen and going to college it invariably always boils down to sex sooner rather than later. Because at that age everybody is in a perpetual state of sexual frustration which needs to be vented and exercised at any and all opportunity.

It has even already been discussed -in terse, strained monosyllables- between him and his new roommate. Said roommate being a very private and rational person, not at all of the judgmental sort. Truly, Ohtori  _likes_  Hiyoshi. They get along. But he'd felt really irritated when even he went as far to go:  _Really? Never?_

Maybe Ohtori doesn't miss it because he never experienced it, but if he were to be completely honest with himself that sort of intimacy has never really occurred to him before. Even the few token attempts at 'dating' and the subsequent 'making out' haven't really been able to thrill him. It is nice enough if the girls are moderately intelligent and didn't slather on too much lipgloss, but otherwise he's never truly suffered the uncontrollable urge to rip off their clothes, throw them onto the nearest available surface and have his wicked way with them.

Ohtori, when he can be bothered to stop and consider it more closely, mostly figures he hasn't met the right girl yet. 

That and he doesn't particularly care, regardless. So besides the occasional "What? Never?  _Seriously_?!" he just goes around being a regular college student.

It is halfway through the first semester that he realizes there might be more to it than that.

*

Advanced Life Drawing is by far Ohtori's favorite class.

Not because he gets to ogle naked people without getting sued for it. No, Ohtori just likes drawing people. He's really good at it, too. This is something he is aware of without any undue cockiness or arrogant pride. It is simply true. Besides knowing this himself, everybody else says so, too.

It is a Tuesday. 

Ohtori has already dragged himself through a full day of classes and is starting to feel a little fuzzy at the edges, as though someone has microwaved his brain. Not to mention his hand is cramping from taking notes and it is a very miserable, rainy and dank day all in all.

But as he sits down at his easel and starts pulling out supplies, he feels himself relax. Life Drawing classes are held in the attic, all wooden beams and worn, paint-splattered floors. Glorious amounts of light slant in through the big, canted windows, ideal for drawing. As everybody trickles in there's subdued conversation at the edges of Ohtori's own personal bubble, along with soft snores from his neighbor who droops in a crooked faceplant against the easel next to him.

Again.

Ohtori would've woken him up, had he known his name. Alright, Ohtori is also rather shy and withdrawn. This all worked fine in middle school, but in college it is all about being social and being social in the  _right way_. He doesn't feel too guilty, because his neighbor always wakes up like clockwork as soon as the model takes the first pose.

"Alright people," the professor says quellingly, shushing everybody. "New model today" -loud groans of dismay, drowning out the rest. Secretly, Ohtori allows a small sigh of relief. Their previous model had been a woman, middle-aged, but possessing of an amazing, voluptuous body that had drawn a terrible amount of lewd commentary. Ohtori had loved drawing her, never having had a model with such an interesting and extreme frame -tiny waist and full thighs, luscious hips and pert breasts, like a vision straight out of Ancient Greece. But having to witness half of the male students make rude gestures and even going so far to try and ask her out had spoiled the experience entirely.

"Enough!" the professor barks, "I trust you all to show the due respect that you failed to show the previous sessions."

There is movement at the edge of his vision as the model comes out from behind the screen, crossing to the middle of the room on bare feet, wrapped in a yukata for the sake modesty until he has to take it off.

Ohtori, who had been struggling with securing a roll of canvas to the wooden board on his easel stops moving. And breathing. And thinking. 

To his right his neighbor wakes up, jolting up with a manic grin on his otherwise innocent, amiable features. 

"This is Shishido Ryou, he'll be our young male model for the rest of the semester and-"

Nothing registers beyond the name. 

He is of average height, about the same age as him, maybe older. Slight. And not looking as though he is thrilled to be there. Dark eyes sweep with an oddly intense, yet unseeing expression around the room, passing over Ohtori without any flicker of change and then… halt.

His neighbor shifts slightly. Out of the corner of his eyes Ohtori can catch him doing a thumbs up. There's a stirring of something on the model's face and then, an eyeroll. That is all, before his attention is diverted to the professor who brings out a tiny stool. The professor speaks to him, quiet and subdued, giving instructions. The model nods and takes off the yukata.

Ohtori feels a horrible, terrible stab as though a lance has thudded into place between his shoulder blades, where it sticks -quivering, rendering him motionless.

Around him there is a sudden flurry of activity as all the students set to work. Not a peep from anybody. 

Ohtori remembers to breathe and starts into motion, not even having caught how long the sessions will be or if there is any specific media he ought to use. Frantically he looks towards the others and there's only their industrious scribbling.

No time. Instead of turning to the roll of canvas he went through pains to put up all neat and smooth he lunges for his sketchbook and flips through it in a near panic until he gets a perfect, clear page. Pencil. A few clatter to the floor as he grabs for them clumsily and instantly everybody looks at him. Even the model -without turning his head, just those dark eyes slanting sideways. 

Ohtori feels himself grow hot as his cheeks pound with humiliation.

What's  _wrong_  with him?

And then, when everybody turns to the task at hand again, Ohtori takes a deep, steadying breath. And looks.

He has to. It's what an artist does, first and foremost -observe. The heat in his cheeks doesn't leave. Shishido is nearly facing him. Close enough at least to leave not very much to the imagination. There's a jumble of wild, hysterical observations that scream at him. One prominently being: he's got long hair. 

He does. Long enough that part of it drapes over his shoulder, dark and smooth like precious ink. The rest goes down his back, ending in sleek licks below his shoulder blades. 

The second is rather more objective in that Ohtori can't help but see the extreme, glaring, near shocking contrast compared to the previous model. As though the professor is deliberately messing with their heads. Ohtori has done nothing but swooping his brushes and pencils in wonderful dips and arches for two weeks. And now Shishido sits before him, all angles and flat planes and harsh, territorial lines. 

Thin. Enough so to show ribs and hipbones that arch like a challenge, even sitting. Wonderful, boney wrists and an exquisite set of clavicles. Ankles the way you sometimes see in children, almost delicate and fragile seeming. This, while nothing about him is fragile. In fact, there's strong delineations where muscle sits on his body, all lean, tough strength. There are scabs on his left knee, but other than that he has smooth, flawless skin that still holds a promise of brilliant, sunny afternoons. The tops of his thighs and hips are noticeably paler, besides the dark trail of hairs starting under his navel, going down and-

 _Draw_.

He has to draw.

Fingers shaking, Ohtori folds his fingers more securely around the pencil. It's like he's never drawn before, as if he suddenly can't remember how he ever did this before. It always came to him fluently, sweet and rich and sometimes wild, fingers skating across the page with perfect confidence and joy.

And now he doesn't even dare to press down enough to touch the page.

Ohtori looks up again, forcing himself to choose a point to start from, something he otherwise never has to pause to consider; he'll be making shapes before he realizes it.

It is as though he fails to take in the man as a whole, instead his eyes catch and trip on the hands -the way his fingers curl in repose-, only to get lost on the slope of his shoulder -sharp and yet with a swell of muscle in the bicep that speaks of exercise- , the chest right under the sharp shadow of his collarbone -so stark, clear and honest as it balances between the neck and torso- and then, further up where he didn't dare to linger before.

Shishido's face.

Here, Ohtori's fingers twitch, then clamp around his pencil.

His face is devoid of expression, politely blank. Or not. No, not quite. There, around his eyebrows, a slight frown and those dark eyes inappropriately fierce, almost like defiance, like  _I dare you_.

Ohtori doesn't, he looks away and then back, not to the eyes but the rest of his face. It is finely wrought, sharp and yet not too angular, not overly masculine but not at all feminine, with thin lips under a neat nose, high cheekbones. His eyebrows slant, with an irregularity in the left one: barely perceptible at the outmost corner.

"Fifteen minutes are over!" the professor suddenly says and Ohtori nearly goes into cardiac arrest. On the stool, Shishido snatches up the yukata and slips into it before standing and stretching. 

There is not a single line on Ohtori's page. 

Briefly he considers throwing out a wild sketch, but quickly dismissed it. There is no way any amount of scribbling would cover up the fact that he's not done anything at all for the past fifteen minutes.

As the professor arrives at his easel he makes a noise of surprise. "Ohtori, what… where?" 

"I'm… I am sorry, sensei," Ohtori manages, feeling his face heat up again. "I don't, uhm."

"Anything the matter?"

"I guess I was... surprised?" he hazards, which is true enough.

A chuckle. "Yes, I realize this model is vastly different from Tori-san last week. But it is imperative to master different body types, maybe it helps to consider the negative spaces for a moment or to find balance in the line of his spine and the angle of his hips which defines the rest of his body, and go from there."

"I- yes," Ohtori manages. "Thank you, sensei."

Left with a sense of frustration and shame, Ohtori glares at the empty page. He knows this and it smarts that needs to be told, now. Art is what he does, day in, day out. Such basics shouldn't have to be repeated to him and yet there he is, with a blank page and confusion pressing him down.

During the second pose, Ohtori forces himself. Pencil to page, a firm, skating line. His back. Then, Ohtori makes his eyes go up, consider. Shishido's back is to him and he is lying down, almost, propped up on one arm, head hanging to trail hair to the elevated stage. As though he is about to lower himself down fully. Ohtori sits and looks, it ought to be a pose depicting slow, languid movement, steeped with defeat, but what he gets is the sense of rising, as if he feels that Shishido will push away from the ground and stand any moment now. 

There's more energy in the pose than should be.

His pencil is moving, thoughtfully. Unsure what to do with that, how to handle the relaxed muscles and weight clearly gravitating  _down_  when he feels as though his hand wants to show  _up_. There's beauty in the line of his spine, like a stretched out S tipped sideways. His hand moves, even as he sits frowning.

Again, fifteen minutes are up. Shishido puts on the yukata again, hiding himself. Ohtori looks at his page and groans in dismay. At least he more or less has the full figure, but it is absolutely disjoined, wayward, scuttling strokes making up the most of it with a saturated fixation on the top of his back, shoulders and dominant supporting arm. There lingers some semblance of his usual skill: in the succinct, meticulous manner of capturing details in an understated way. No more than necessary, sometimes a mere suggestion. 

It would like nice if the rest wasn't an utter disaster.

"Oh," the professor goes.

And with that one word Ohtori hangs his head a little. He's never any less good than he can be to spare his fellow peers, even if they resent him for easily being the very best of the class. Not that he craves the praise, let alone needs it, but it comes his way regardless when he draws the way he does. And now this. The professor is duly disappointed with the result.

"This, it's good, Ohtori," he begins, overly gentle, indicating the part of the shoulders. "Very good, wonderful energy here, but the rest is unbalanced. Do the whole figure first, detailing after. And mind these short, nervous strokes, go for fluent, complete lines and-"

Ohtori sits and fumes at himself, bearing the lecture because he deserves it even though he already knows all the professor tells him from looking at it himself.

Despite knowing, the whole two hours are more of the same. During the five remaining minutes of the last pose, Ohtori puts his pencil down with a sigh. Maybe it's just a temporary block. He hopes. So instead he sits there, frustrated and confused and finds himself staring at Shishido despite the discomfort it brings. There's a sense of restless energy about him and his mind is obviously elsewhere. His chin is propped up on his hands, which curl together almost vulnerably. Dark hair makes a backdrop for them. The dark eyes are distant, thoughtful, eyelashes shuttering them. They are dark and dusky, almost sweet compared the perpetual frown of his eyebrows.

He's beautiful.

Ohtori finds he's drawing anyway.

When the session ends, Ohtori feels like he'd gone through a clothes mangler. Weak, shaky and disoriented. His hands fumble on closing the sketchbook because his eyes want to track the slight figure gathering the yukata around him before he disappears from view behind the partition. Ohtori rubs at his face as others already stream past, a snatch of two girls giggling, heads bent together close as they whisper about the model.

Already looking when Shishido emerges again, Ohtori takes in the sight of him clothed in an oversized hoodie and scruffy jeans, rucksack slung casually over his shoulder. Normal. And yet not at all diminished for that. And Ohtori is noticing the ponytail, too, restraining the sweep of dark hair but for a few stubborn stands framing his face and then, wait.  _He's coming right at me_. Ohtori panics. He's noticed, he's seen, Ohtori doesn't know but there is purpose in his direction and the eyes are leveled right at him and he thinks he dies a little. Shishido speaks.

"Wake up!"

Ohtori jumps, scatters pencils again, drops his sketchbook and starts to grab for words to form an apology for staring and he gets out "I" before he realizes Shishido is not even talking to him at all. He's talking to his neighbor.

Ohtori blinks.

"Hmmm, is it over?" the other artist goes, scratching blonde curls sleepily.

"Geez, Jirou, did you really sleep through it all?" Shishido asks, stooping to grab a bunch of pencils and pastels and dropping them into the other's bag. Rough. His voice is rough. Familiar and gravelly and Ohtori wishes desperately to know what these two people mean to one another. Why Shishido is talking to him. A painful, irrational swell of pure jealousy.

The other gets up, too, gathering his sketchbook to his chest and accepting the packed bag from Shishido. "I did not!" he says indignantly. "In fact, if I ever have to draw your dick again it'll be too soon."

Ohtori goggles.

Shishido scoffs and sort of herds him into motion towards the exit. "Please, like it's anything you haven't seen before."

Ohtori chokes.

"We were five!" Jirou protests, seemingly not at all bothered by the thread of conversation

"Yeah, well, like it-" Shishido abruptly stops, crouches, picks something up. Turns. "Hey," he holds a brush. 

Ohtori can only sort of pant shallowly for air, his chest aches.

"This yours?" Shishido looks straight into his eyes, harsh, unashamed and almost violent. Ohtori drops his own, feeling his temperature rising to feverish height.

"Uhm." Words, he needs words. Dammit brain, this is your chance! Nothing.

"Hello?" Shishido prompts, making an amused expression.

Ohtori catches it, blushes some more and instantly commits the lines of his face to memory. "Yes," he manages and accepts it with shaking fingers. "Thank you."

"Sure," Shishido's already turning away, the exchange slipping past him without any lingering impact. Instead he pushes Jirou towards the door ahead of him and they both disappear from view.

Heart in his throat, Ohtori turns the brush between his fingers absently.

This?

Not good.

*

"Okaeri," Hiyoshi mumbles as Ohtori falls into their tiny apartment. "What do you-  _are you alright_?!"

Ohtori stands there for a moment, thinks about it and then promptly bursts out into high, rather hysterical laughter. On the couch, Hiyoshi just stares at him, mouth open in shock. When the tinny sounds of his hysterical mirth dies down enough to sound rather edged in sobs, Hiyoshi springs up, grabs his wrist and drags him to the couch.

"Here, sit down." He orders, attempting some very awkward soothing motions by patting Ohtori on the top of his head. "I'll -I'll make you some tea and-"

"I'm gay," Ohtori says.

Hiyoshi snatches his hand back. "Uhm. Okay," he goes, sounding bewildered and shocked.

"I'm gay," Ohtori echoes. "What now. Shit." and then adds, exasperated. "Oh, sit down. Don't be silly."

"Okay," Hiyoshi repeats again and sits, if far enough to be out of reach were Ohtori to suddenly make a garb for him if his homosexual urges compelled him to molest his roommate.

They sit together in silence; Ohtori with his head in his hands and Hiyoshi looking on as though observing a train wreck, not wanting to but unable to help himself.

"I want you to know that I very much wish to be supportive, but having never received the token five-step pamphlet I am at loss as to how to proceed," Hiyoshi tells him, seriously.

More wild laughter bubbles past Ohtori's lips before he can choke out, "Me neither."

Slowly then, the story comes out; the two hours of torture that he wishes never had happened. That he wishes never had ended. Ohtori doesn't even understand why he's telling Hiyoshi this, why he'd even trust him regardless of the stupidity of blurting out this new found information about himself at his roommate, who, all in all, could've reacted  _a lot_  worse. Actually, in all honesty, Hiyoshi sits through it quite blank and silent, listening until Ohtori splutters to an exhausted halt.

Silence.

Hiyoshi opens his mouth and closes it again. Squirms. Finally gathers himself enough to say, "Okay."

Ohtori laughs again, calmer than before.

"I am unsure that finding another man beautiful makes you… uh, that way inclined," Hiyoshi ventures. "It is not like you, ah… wanted to, uhm."

Raising his head, Ohtori just makes a face at Hiyoshi.

"Oh," he goes, looking away sharply. "You did."

"I don't know," Ohtori admits, closing his eyes. "I don't know."

"Okay," Hiyoshi says, helplessly. Then adds, "It's okay."

"Sorry," Ohtori sighs, hanging his head. "I shouldn't have-"

"It's okay," Hiyoshi repeats and this time tentatively grabs his bicep in a show of support. 

"Thanks."

The hand releases him. "Don't mention it."

"I… I need a nap," Ohtori whispers, getting up on shaky legs before going to gather everything he just sort of dropped. "I'm tired." 

"Alright," Hiyoshi agrees, watching him with sharp eyes. "Stir fry for dinner?"

"Sure," Ohtori nods some more before reaching out for his sketchbook as though he's afraid it'll bite. "Thanks."

"It's okay," Hiyoshi repeats and disappears into the kitchen.

After a moment, Ohtori goes into his room, closes the door behind him with a click.

That evening, Ohtori sits cross-legged on his bed staring with something akin to despair at the drawings he made of Shishido. Partly because they are just so terribly awful and partly trying to figure everything, but most of all himself, out. Maybe he is overreacting, finding someone beautiful doesn't need to mean anything more than that. Yet this is a blatant lie and he knows it. It wasn't just that. The episode sits in mind with an intensity nothing short of terror, even if it was not quite that. 

Not quite that at all.

_It is not like you, ah… wanted to, uhm._

Did he? 

Ohtori is not sure. Most of the time he was simply too confused to be considering anything beyond the naked body before him. He doesn't want to try, either. He wants to forget it, hang on to not much caring about it at all because his situation with his parents is disastrous enough without having to introduce a boyfriend to them.

 _Stop right there_ , Ohtori scolds himself.  _Please, '_ boyfriend?' _. Like that would ever happen._

Besides, that would be doing  _exactly_  what he scorned the rest of his fellow peers for, lusting after someone only because he'd gotten to seen him naked. Not to mention it would be very unlikely that Shishido would be… like  _that_ , too.

_Please, like it's anything you haven't seen before._

Ohtori's fingers curl into a furious first.

_We were five!_

Childhood friends? Definitely something like that. They were obviously close.

With a sigh, Ohtori turns another page and sees it was his last sketch. There's a near obsessive focus on the hands, the line of his jaw and chin, the lips before the rest of the drawing falls apart in a scatter of skittering, frantic lines. I bothers him immensely. Almost absentmindedly he reaches for a pencil.

*

Next day, he walks into the attic looking and feeling like dead warmed over. Out of habit he gravitates to the usual easel he occupies and lets his bag fall to the ground with an alarming thud, likely obliterating several chalk pastels in the process. For all that, he's oddly calm. Maybe his nerves were truly shot so badly he is incapable of doing anything else but have a random existential crisis at Hiyoshi's expense. That, or the fact that he didn't sleep at all may have something to do with it.

"Here."

Ohtori lets out a shrill little shriek entirely unbecoming of a one hundred and ninety-some centimeter tall male and grips the front of his sweater in alarm like a victorian lady having vapors. 

It's the blonde neighbor, holding out a can of energy drink. Smiling.

Jirou, he remembers.  _The friend_ , his brain adds in a dark, suspicious undertone.

"You look horrible!" he gushes. "No offense and all."

"Uhm," Ohtori goes and wishes he wasn't socially inept. "Thank you."

"No problem," Jirou says, grinning. "I'm offering because I know what it feels like to be tired."

Ohtori nods slowly, pops the can. It smells like fizzy sirup. "Because of your condition?" Ohtori asks, referring to the way he always falls asleep.

A frown. "Condition?" Jirou repeats. "I don't have a condition."

"Oh," Ohtori goes, drooping. Awkward.

"That's just because he's a lazy bum," a voice says from behind him. Shishido.

Ohtori inhales his can of soda up his nose and promptly doubles over with spluttering, gross coughs. Just his luck.

"I'm not lazy!" Jirou protests and then adds, "Hey, you okay?" as Ohtori sits with energy drink dribbling out his nose and down the front of his shirt.

Ohtori flaps a hand at him, nodding.

"Alright," Jirou agrees doubtfully, before letting him be. "I only fall asleep when there's nothing exciting going on," he shoots back at Shishido.

"I'm naked, what's not exciting about that?" Shishido returns, pushing the side of Jirou's head.

Ohtori chokes some more.

"Maybe if you had boobs," Jirou tells him, pushing back. "Go change."

"Bah," is all Shishido says, disappearing towards the far end of the room.

All this while Ohtori frantically dabs at his face with his sleeve, wondering whether this would be a good time to impale himself upon a pencil or something. Surely, at this point, that would be a mercy.

"You okay?" Jirou asks, regarding Ohtori as though he's in his last death throes.

"Fine!"

"I know he looks scary, be he's really quite nice," Jirou says, smiling gently.

"What?" Ohtori wheezes, sniffing miserably.

"Ryou," Jirou clarifies. "No need to be scared of him."

A bark of laughter escapes him before he can smother it by clapping both hands in front of his mouth. Several students turn to give him weird looks. Jirou makes a concerned, if rather dubious face as though questioning the integrity of Ohtori's mental state of mind. Then, with a shrug and a smile, he pulls away to his own easel to set up a canvas.

Ohtori resigns himself to doing the same. As much as he likes working in his sketchbook, it would be easier to work larger and might not be so tempted to fiddle with details. Maybe with a piece of good, fat charcoal. That should be enough to force his style.

"Everybody ready?" The professor calls, walking to the middle of the room with Shishido tagging behind in the yukata again, looking mutinous. Whatever the reason he is doing this for, it's not because he enjoys doing it. "Standing poses, twenty minutes each. Go!"

Shishido takes off the yukata. And.

Stands there.

Naked.

Ohtori sits down, eyes the size of saucers and scrabbling for his sketchbook with the air of a drowning man just having spotted a piece of driftwood. Okay, alright, he's gay. That, or he's suffering from random erections like it's the last one he'll ever have and his body is making it count and thank heavens the sketchbook is big enough to hide all the evidence and he really wishes he wasn't wearing a sweater because is it warm in here or what?

This is terrible. Pure blasphemy. Utterly unprofessional! And also sad and pathetic and it is totally, hideously unfair that Shishido is the most beautiful person he's ever seen. Even when he stands there scowling murder at some undefined point in the distance. 

His sinuses still sting from the energy drink and his perfectly set up canvas stands there, unused. Ohtori reaches for a pencil instead and sits there once more, lost and confused and quite unable to grasp Shishido as a whole. The body before him still makes him ache and the problem in his pants isn't going down, but with the pencil in his fingers he passes a threshold despite himself and he's looking, looking, searching for a place to start.

It is as if Shishido's too much for the pages of his sketchbook, as thought it can't possible contain the whole of him and Ohtori knows this is impossible, because he's drawn people countless times before. Worst of all is that he wants to draw him like this, because the pose is lovely. Shishido stands there, head hanging and elbows pointing up to the ceiling with his raised arms and hands caught in the long strands of hair. Again there's an obvious line of movement in him starting right from the dominant leg supporting his body to the suppressed tension in muscles of his stomach and the swell of his shoulders as he holds his arms up.

His ribs are pronounced, drawing shadowed lines into his flank and that's wonderful, even if Ohtori worries about Shishido eating enough. But on the white paper it comes out preciously, the thin, fragile ribcage caught under the skin and the powerful bunch of muscles at his shoulders and -Ohtori has to, he's an artist, he's got to draw what he sees- his nipples, which are dusky and pebbled and Ohtori shoves the rising surge aside roughly, because he's not willing to ruin this. 

Two days ago he was perfectly, happily clueless and now this.

And when the twenty minutes are up, Ohtori only has the part of shoulder and ribs and nipples to show for it, with the rest ambling off in finicky, crude lines. The balance sits more or less alright, but something is off regardless and he's shaking his head at in dismay.

The professor comes up to him, ready to lavish praise, takes one look and ambles into the opposite direction hurriedly. If Ohtori was a lesser sort of person he'd dramatically rip out the page and crumple it. Not that he ever would, because it would feel like rejecting Shishido by proxy and he's already too far gone for that.

*

"Don't tell me," Hiyoshi says in a tone that betrays he already knows and dreads the answer. "You have Life Drawing every day?"

Ohtori kicks off his shoes at the entrance, shifts his sketchbook around as he takes off his coat and just gives Hiyoshi a look.

"Sucks to be you," Hiyoshi mutters, shrugging philosophically before disappearing into the kitchen again.

Blearily Ohtori drifts after him, stomach rumbling ravenously as he gets a whiff of whatever it is Hiyoshi is prodding with a spoon. It is one of their agreements: Hiyoshi cooks for the both of them while Ohtori irons their clothing. The rest of the chores they divide, but Ohtori is terrible at cooking, while Hiyoshi is passable and Hiyoshi hates ironing with the burning passion of a thousand suns while Ohtori finds it rather soothing. It works.

"Not on Mondays," Ohtori answers belatedly and then does a frustrated, aimless turn.

"Still the same model?" Hiyoshi asks, delicately.

"For a whole two weeks," Ohtori mutters. "I'm going to take a shower."

"Oh my fucking god, I did NOT need to know that," Hiyoshi spits at him, edging away.

"What?" Ohtori goes, bemused. "What, I don't- HEY! I'm not going to- to-"

"Oh please!" Hiyoshi snorts, lip curling. "We all know what 'I am going to take a shower means' when you've only yesterday revealed that this person has such an impact on you you think you're gay after nineteen years of abstinence!"

"That has nothing to do with- Tch. You know what, never mind. I'm going to take a shower." Ohtori flings up his hands and strides out of the kitchen.

"Make sure to wash out the tub so I don't step in-"

"NOT LISTENING!" Ohtori yells at him and slams the door of the bathroom shut with vindictive satisfaction. Stupid Hiyoshi. As though he's going to masturbate in the shower to the images of Shishido's naked body. His naked, very beautiful, very male body.

That is naked.

Ohtori stares angrily at the tub, at his reflection in the mirror, tries vehemently not to think about it and then curses Hiyoshi soundly in all the most terrible ways which he can think of.

*

"It's okay," Hiyoshi says later, as they're both sitting down with dinner.

"You're terrible," Ohtori says sullenly. "I'm never going to forgive you."

"Okay," Hiyoshi says placidly.

Ohtori shoves him.

*

The following week is a haze for Ohtori. He does well enough in his other classes, but Life Drawing becomes the focal point of his entire day -one he both dreads and longs for. Knowing he's sexually attracted to someone is disconcerting. It's new and strange and suddenly there's questions, questions he's never had before. Because he never cared. Only now do the full implications of his profound lack of interest present an issue. It seems impossible that he never cared before, that the girls he kissed were nice but that he only did so because it was expected of him and that's what you do when you're in a relationship. That after these dates he went home, picked up his sketchbook and drew anything that came to mind -anything except for the girl he was just with. Because those never came to mind.

Now he wonders about kissing someone he's never kissed before. Finds himself looking at the unhappy set of another person's lips and wonder, wonder in this maddeningly, desperate way and his body reacts, too. Beyond the humiliating erections. He'll look at Shishido's face, at that mouth he's never kissed and wonder whether he'd be as forceful, as fierce as his eyes always are, as domineering as his presence, or completely different. Ohtori doesn't know him, doesn't know this person, but his own lips will feel warm and aching, almost fuller with the need to find out.

And Shishido is a man.

Part of Ohtori is pretty sure he's upset  _because_  it's a man and the other part is upset because  _he doesn't care_ , which makes no sense at all but isn't any less true for it. What does this make him? Some part of him had been always been shrugging its proverbial shoulders because it was alright, he just hadn't found the right girl yet. Then sometimes, especially after one of those social pitfalls about sex and the having of it and how everybody obviously wanted it and why aren't you having it, there'd been the tentative knowledge that he could very well be asexual. Even that was also ruefully accepted with a shrug, because he wasn't sure either way. But now he knows he's attracted, sexually attracted, enough to have feverish dreams about it, enough to grit his teeth angrily and slip his hand under the waistband of his boxer shorts, enough to suffer through hours of Life Drawing with a painful erection. Does that make him bisexual? He's kissed girls and it was okay. He didn't recoil or hate it. Or does it make him gay? Gay, when he's never in his life thought about another boy like that, ever.

He doesn't know.

So he's confused and tired and cranky. Virtually obsessed with someone whom he doesn't know but has seen naked. Enough so that Hiyoshi -politely enough- decrees that Ohtori has to close his door at all times because  _the sketches are kinda freaking him out, okay? Ohtori, no offense, but your whole room is covered in them_. It's true. Ohtori draws Shishido during the day, when he's right there, alive and real and in front of him. And he draws him when he gets home, during the weekend, the Life Drawing free Monday, draws him constantly, frustrated that he _can't_.

He can't draw Shishido.

*

After two weeks, Ohtori almost sobs in relief when Tori-san makes a reappearance.

A speech about respect is drilled into them accordingly and soon Ohtori finds himself standing at his easel with a brush, at ease and confident with only a small amount of apprehension. Until he touches the first stroke onto his pristine canvas.

And it's perfect.

*

As far as roommates go, Hiyoshi is pretty awesome.

Especially considering he took the whole gay-thing in his stride, along with the continuing flood of sketches of naked men (well, man) and Ohtori's tendency to be socially constipated.

"You look better," Hiyoshi comments as they sit on their tiny, pathetic couch to watch a program on their tiny, pathetic television. It's a Tuesday evening and the both of them have just shoveled down a decent enough dinner of ramen. Outside, it rains, steady and dreary. Already the temperature is taking an increasingly steep nosedive. Wearing their ugliest but comfiest sweaters, both boys sit in companionable silence. Until now.

Ohtori, being nearly a head taller than Hiyoshi and possessing stupendously long legs which are awesome for taking stairs and jumping over obstacles -but not so much for sitting down on too small furniture, cranes sideways awkwardly to give him a questioning look.

"Less crazed," is all Hiyoshi says, not even taking his eyes off the screen.

Frowning, Ohtori elbows him. "I wasn't-"

"Yeah, you were," Hiyoshi interrupts. "I actually got pretty worried near the end. Even picked up pamphlets."

"Ha  _ha_. Very funny," Ohtori mutters, feelings his cheeks heat up. He ducks down, tucking his chin in moodily.

Hiyoshi tears his eyes away from the television and just sort of… looks at him. "I did," he says, perfectly deadpan and distressingly serious. Then he suddenly twists himself to fish behind the couch for his backpack and comes up with a fistful of colorful slips of paper.

 _We're Here. We're Queer. Get Used to it_  /  _Gay by birth, Fabulous by Choice_  and  _Out of the Closets and into the Streets_  are only a selection of what he's holding up.

Most of them are pink. The others violet.

There's rainbows.

Ohtori looks at Hiyoshi and thinks with pure, calm clarity: I am going to murder him.

Hiyoshi still has that infuriating, oh-so-serious expression on his face. Then he opens his mouth and says: "I wanted to be supportive. I've never known someone gay before. At least, I don't think I have. I need to be prepared."

"By reading a pamphlet that says  _Fabulous by Choice_?" Ohtori grits out, regretful he doesn't have anything sharp or heavy at hand.

"Well, the receptionist at the desk said it would be educational," Hiyoshi explains, before adding thoughtfully. "She was really cute, too. Not that you would care, I suppose. I think her name was… Kiki or Kimi, maybe. Hmm."

Sitting there, Ohtori only now fully realizes that Hiyoshi possesses his own brand of madness. And that he's going to murder him. Right now. Ohtori  _lunges_.

Still pondering the cuteness of some girl named Kiki or Kimi or something like that maybe, Hiyoshi finds himself getting knocked flat. Air whooshes out of him and the couch is lumpy and hard under his cheek and ribs and Ohtori is leaning over him, pinning him by ruthlessly exerting his sheer superior weight and height.

Hiyoshi flails. He flops. 

"I… I don't feel that way about you, Ohtori!" he huffs, straining against the deadlock on his biceps.

Ohtori growls whilst grappling with Hiyoshi's limbs: "I'm  _trying_  to kill you! Stay still, please!"

That makes Hiyoshi laugh. Loud. With spittle dusting Ohtori's cheek, who tries to crane his head away with a grimace. "You couldn't if your life depended on it, Ohtori," he says, lips curling as he stares up with eyes that are sharp as the edge of a blade. "Don't you remember? I teach martial arts on the weekends."

Ohtori doesn't roll his eyes, but he sort of snorts, having heard that a million times before. Hiyoshi is stuck beneath him, smaller and lither than him, already subdued. Grinning, he answers: "I'll show you martia-  _AAAAAAAH_ "

Before he knows it, understands it, Hiyoshi  _moves_. The room flips and Ohtori's breath gets knocked out of him. Just like that, Hiyoshi has overpowered him and is sitting on top of him, straddling. Ohtori's wrists are pinned to either side of his head.

"You were saying?" Hiyoshi goes, smirking down at him.

Ohtori merely stares up at him, just short of dismay. He's on his back, pressed into the couch by another guy. Who is sitting on his hips.

Silence.

"Well," Hiyoshi clears his throat. "This is sufficiently awkward."

Ohtori nods. "Yes. Please get off."

Hiyoshi nods, too. "Okay," he goes and scrambles off with none of the beautiful, deadly grace he displayed a heartbeat ago.

In that moment they both just stay there, Hiyoshi sitting prim and ramrod straight, Ohtori still on his back wondering if he should feel violated. After a minute, Ohtori rights himself, too.

"Let's never talk about this again," he suggest, casually.

"Okay," Hiyoshi nods.

*

Wednesday Ohtori dominates the Life Drawing session as he always has.

The professor uses his canvas to educate the rest of them, to indicate what they should pay attention to, how to capture another person on paper. Ohtori looks at it, his own work, and knows it is good. There's no vainglory in it. Only the truth.

He's happy. Painfully relieved. His skill, his talent -it is still his.

There's the instinctive joy in his art he always had, a sort of sweet release in the creating of it. Until he goes home. At home, sitting on his bed, he tries. Over and over and there's joy in it, because drawing Shishido is the purest act of it.

And just when he think he's  _there_ , nearly, only to realize he never was even close.

Shishido is beyond him.

*

It's dark out when Ohtori exits the building into the cold air. Slung over his shoulder is a bulky bag with laundry which awkwardly bumps against the small of his back as he sets off for the laundromat. This week it is his turn to go and he usually takes care of it soon as he can but somehow Thursday caught him by surprise and he's out of clean underwear and Hiyoshi is muttering about jeans. Even though it is already after ten Ohtori grits his teeth and gets on with it. It was his own damn fault because he got rather... distracted.

Drawing.

So he braves the twenty minute trek through the shadowy streets, traveling from one halo of golden light to the next as the lampposts guide the way. With nothing else to distract him but his own misty exhales and the occasional passing car, Ohtori's mind drifts off. To Shishido. Who, incidentally, he was drawing. After he'd finished biting his knuckles to keep his gasps and moans smothered. Or before. Maybe in between. It's rather hard to remember which happened first. Just that it took a serious effort not to say his name as he shuddered in release and that he's thoroughly fed up with himself.

In those moments it's like a part of him takes over he never knew  _existed_. 

It's real enough, too real and violent, even. 

But it's just that…

He feels weird. Even though he supposes it's normal for everybody, being… turned on. Aroused. Horny. Whatever. It just doesn't sit right with him. Too shallow or something. Which is dumb because porn exists for that very purpose. But Shishido, it's not right. He'd a model for Life Drawing and deserves courtesy and respect, not his pathetic lusting.

Maybe he's thinking too hard about this.

Ohtori sighs and turns the corner, hoisting the heavy bag up to settle more securely onto his shoulder. Looks up to cross the street. Teeters to a stop. Shocked, he frowns, unable to believe what his eyes see. The door and window to the laundromat are crisscrossed with caution tape. One of the windows is a jagged maw of glass, shattered. The insides are completely trashed; several washing machines are on their sides or broken beyond help. When he approaches the window he sees there's a paper taped up, apologizing for the inconvenience and directing customers to another laundromat.

At the other side of the town.

Ohtori quietly seethes.

After closing his eyes and taking some steadying breaths, he turns and heads for the bus stop instead. The laundry needs to be done anyway and it is highly unlikely this laundromat will be available again anytime this week. Better get it over with. He needs clean underwear and Hiyoshi is out of pants and what kind of person  _trashes_  a laundromat? What could that possibly have achieved? Would anyone be impressed by someone beating up a laundromat or destroying a window? What would that prove? Besides needing anger management.

It takes ten minutes for the bus to arrive. Then fifteen until he needs to get off again. Five minutes to the other laundromat.

Ohtori's back is killing him. Doubtless the strap of the bag has chafed right through the skin on his shoulder and down to the bone. It's almost midnight. He has to get up at seven to get to class. He's hungry. He just found he's gay four weeks ago. He's tired and his feet hurt and he's cold. He just wants to go home and draw Shishido's butt.. umm. Backside. You know. In an appropriate, artistic manner. 

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Ohtori lets the bag thump to the ground for a moment as he gathers himself. Then he shakes his head clear and pats his pockets to check for the money and key. Hopes fervently this laundromat isn't more expensive than the one he always frequents, because he's got only 300 yen -exactly enough to pay for the washing and the drying. A blast of hot, damp air welcomes him as he pushes the door open to the sound of mechanic churning. Ohtori blinks and drags the bag over the threshold.

Instinctively his eyes jump around the interior, noting the rhythmic sloshing of an active machine, the vending machines with their cool and alluring drinks. And then the only other person present. The owner of the clothes being tossed around in the machine.

Ohtori almost,  _almost_  backs out again as soon as he realizes.

Would have, if that person hadn't looked up at the sound of door opening, disturbing the monopoly he had on the public utility.

It's Shishido.

To Ohtori it feels like the ground drops away and he's free falling and this must be engineered by some malicious divine being bent upon the complete annihilation of his mental sanity. It must be. There'd no other plausible, logical explanation.

Stuff like this just doesn't happen in real life.

Only it does.

Because after a single disinterested glance and a half-nod of rueful politeness, Shishido turns back towards the PSP cradled between his hands. A cheerful tune springs up again. Fingers punch buttons methodically.

Ohtori remembers to breathe, remembers he's not the lead character in a bad comedy romance and should  _stop acting_  like one, and shuffles inside. Besides the two of them, the laundromat is completely deserted. Immediately Ohtori's mind eagerly rushes forth with a disturbingly wide array of scenarios that may just unfold -from beating Shishido's highscore on the game and duly impressing him and winning his affections,  _naturally_ , to wild, steamy sex on top of a thrumming washing machine.

It's just. Shishido is right there. And he's just as magnetic and intriguing and downright impossibly attractive as always… but. But he's also very human and approachable, in a way. Not that Ohtori  _dares_. Not at all, he just wishes he did, so he could make a flippant remark to draw his attention and make him laugh. That would be wonderful. But he doesn't, so all that's left to him is to do what he always does -look. Observe.

Shishido's dressed in a oversized, bright red hoodie with a pair of jean shorts cut of at knee height. Worn, scuffed blue Converse sit snug on his feet. There's a terrible scab on his shin, as though something mauled it. A bandaid on his right knee. The long hair is partially held back in a ponytail, pulling it clear off his forehead, with the rest draping against his neck and pooling into the hood of his sweater as though it was a basin. With the sleeves partially rolled up, there's a lovely view of muscles playing under the skin in his forearms as he manipulates the game. There's a black wristband, fabric, like one you'd slip on for sporting.

On the ground by his feet is an empty bag not unlike Ohtori's, gaping as it awaits the clean and dried clothing. A packet of candy on the chair next to him, barely touched.

Shishido bites his bottom lip as he plays and unabashedly leans sideways as if it will encourage whatever he's controlling in the game to follow suit. His feet lift from the ground as he hang suspended in the intensity of the moment,  _waiting_  - then a smirk. The PSP cheers out a victorious jangle. Shishido slumps back, satisfied and stuffs his hand into the bag for a candy.

Ohtori finds he's smiling, for some incomprehensible reason. He physically shakes himself.

Why was he here again?

Oh yeah.

Laundry.

Right. Like that even  _matters_  anymore. 

But he's got to keep up appearances so he approaches the first machine in his line of sight, passing Shishido -coincidentally of course. Checking the rates, he exhales in relief. They are the same. So he starts to methodically lug out clothes to stuff into the machine, all the while aware of Shishido's presence like a red hot brand against the back of his neck.

Prying around in his pocket, he fishes out the coins. One, two, three.

Three, which he fumbles and drops.

Ohtori can only stand there, outraged but not truly surprised, as the coin lands with a mocking, abnormally loud  _tack_  on the ground. Before making a rolling beeline for the very machine he just stowed his laundry in, disappearing underneath, never to be seen again. All he can do is contemplate the delicious absurdity of his life, which he notes with cynical detachment is just getting  _better and better_. 

For anybody but him.

Rubbing his eyes, Ohtori sighs and stoops to drag all the laundry back out again.

"Here." An one hundred yen coin appears under his nose.

"GAH!" Ohtori jumps about a mile, painfully knocking his knee against the machine's door in the process. He groans and clutches it, before craning to look up.

Shishido has one brow cocked in amusement. "Easy there. Bad conscience?" 

 _Breathe Ohtori_ , he coaches himself, suddenly wishing he had some Lamaze classes to draw on.  _Breathe_. So you know what he looks like naked and like to get off to it, big deal.  _BREATHE_.

"Uhm," he manages at long last, staggering upright. He's lightheaded. "Uhm, hello," he adds. 

That's when he realizes he's standing face-to-face with Shishido for the first time. For some reason he's utterly bewildered how much height difference there is between the two of them. The crown of Shishido's reaches barely to Ohtori's chin. Just the right height to be drawn close and tucked under it.

Shishido is still watching him, mouth working to repress a grin. Once more, he holds up the coin between his index and middle finger. "Would this help?"

Tongue-tied, Ohtori tries to come up with something, something good and witty and charming. Or, if not that, at least something halfway coherent. Shishido is at a respectable distance but still close, close enough to see how his hair catches bronze under the artificial light, how the disruption in the left brow is caused by a small scar.

"A-aa," he answers, feeling his cheeks heat up. 

Another sharp grin. Shishido does a trick that lets the coin walk across his knuckles, from pink to thumb -he's right-handed, Ohtori notes- before flicking it up into a spinning arc. Without thinking, Ohtori catches it. Shishido only grins wider.

"T-thank you, I-" he begins to say, hating his feeble stutter on the words.

Already retreating back to his plastic chair, Shishido sort of flaps a hand over his shoulder. "Sure," is all he answers before plunking down with a huff. The bag of candies rustle.

Slowly Ohtori uncurls his fingers. On his palm the coin sits, gleaming faintly. It still holds Shishido's warmth. He's almost sorry to let it go, use it for such a mundane purpose. As soon as he realizes he's getting sentimental over a coin, Ohtori firmly makes himself feed it into the slot. 

It gurgles down.

Number two follows.

Three tips over the metal lip, slips out of view.

No iron swallow of it going down, no reaction in the LCD screen indicating he's ready to go. Ohtori stares at it expectantly. Nothing happens. He jiggles the machine. Silence.

It ate his coin.

IT.

ATE.

HIS.

COIN.

Ohtori isn't usually inclined to outbursts of physical rage, but it is close. Very. The crashing wave of frustration wars with his innate politeness, his natural restraint. Just as he debates kicking it, because  _surely_  nobody would blame him, Shishido sort of shoulders him aside and slams his fist right next to the slot. The sound of the third coin hiccuping down the metal gullet is barely audible over the roar between Ohtori's ears. It's feel like he  _burns_  where Shishido touched him, like his skin  _knew_  and now reaches, calling for more.

The LCD switches on and there's a whirr. It worked.

"Seems like you're having a really crappy day, huh?" Shishido wonders aloud, sticking both hands into the pockets of his shorts as he leans against the adjacent machine.

It's so dry, so casual, so  _true_  that Ohtori laughs, a spontaneous peel of sound, unrestrained.

"You have no idea," he answers, still smiling.

Shishido's mouth twitches in response, mischievous but sweet. Ohtori stops smiling. 

Oh. 

Oh, no.

It's one thing to be obsessed with someone because he physically appeals in all the right ways to you, so strong and harsh that it just happens, despite knowing better. That person blurring into a vague question mark where his psyche is concerned, the essence of him. They could be mean and horrible or sweet and wonderful, but if you don't know, if it is beyond you, they're just this idea. A person, of course, but you have no concept of what shapes them into one, if it's even someone you could come to  _like_. 

Shishido, Ohtori feels -like a needle perforating his heart- is such a person. Someone he could like, for who he is.

The fact that Shishido turns him on by just standing there, just with the curve of his jaw and the shape of his mouth and those eyes, those eyes that are frank and appraising, but so honest because of it, all there, nothing hidden. That's bad enough already. Worse than bad. But, if it was even more than that.

Ohtori looks away, feeling his color rise. Something inside of him, the core of his resolve, shakes.

"Alright," Shishido suddenly speaks up again, commanding Ohtori's complete attention with that one word. "We've… met before, right? I mean, I'm pretty sure we have."

Slowly, Ohtori nods.  _He remembers_.

"I'm sorry," Shishido goes on, sheepish. A hand goes to tangle into his hair, dragging dark locks away from his neck -drawing Ohtori's eye relentlessly. "I can't really remember where…"

"Oh," Ohtori goes and feels his face blaze.  _This is the part where I tell him I've seen him naked_. "Yes, I'm a student at the university where you. Uh."

What he'd expected, he's not sure. But not the way Shishido also suddenly blushes, swallows and stares intently at the tips of his shoes. "Ah," he says with a nod. "My condolences." 

"Uhm," Ohtori squeaks and stares intently at the tips of  _his_  shoes, too.

In the background the machines rumble.

 _Say something_ , Ohtori snarls inwardly.  _If you keep your stupid mouth shut he'll surely take it the wrong way_. But he's no good at this. He's the sort of person to duck out of sight when he sees someone from the university or bursts into cold sweat when his mobile rings with an unknown number. He's never even been to a party or did the 'hanging out thing'. All he knows is his art. 

With that in mind and the awkward topic still crouching between them both, Ohtori opens his mouth fully intending to say something intelligent and funny.

But what comes out is: "You're terrible to draw."

Shishido does a slow blink.

Ohtori slaps both hands so hard to his own mouth he tastes blood. Closes his eyes. He did  _not_  just say that out loud, did he?

A throat being cleared. Shishido's frowning at him. "I'm… sorry?" he offers, voice muted but edged.

He did.

He totally did. There should be a sort of exam people'd be obligated to take before being forced into society and all the consequent minefields of socializing. He's so not ready for this. Fuck. He needs to fix this.  _Fast_. So, despite the disastrous results so far Ohtori opens his mouth again and begins to babble.

"I didn't mean it like- I mean, umm, I have a really hard time drawing you," he blurts.

Shishido just… stares at him. As though debating to grab his laundry and get the hell away from the crazy tall kid with a serious case of foot-in-mouth syndrome. 

"It's not you, it's me," Ohtori goes on.

Shishido sort of winces. Ohtori facepalms. 

"I mean, I am bad at drawing you. Which is not your fault. At all. You're beautiful. UHM," Ohtori splutters. "I mean perfect. I mean. Oh god. In a way, ah, befitting of a professional Life Drawing model sort of perfect. Er. Yes."

And now he wishes to die. Promptly. 

But, seeing as he's having  _a really crappy day_  (Shishido's words, too) after all, he doesn't. Nope, all that happens is that he stands there, just short of hyperventilating and with his head the color of an overripe tomato, the infernal washing machine still churning in the background. Mocking him.

Shishido's jaw hangs a little and he's frowning, like he's not at all sure whether he won't just pick up one of the plastic chairs and beat Ohtori over the head with it. Something Ohtori would be pretty okay with, considering.

"Sure," is all he says after a moment, shaking his head as though to forget all about it.

And then there's a loud beeping.

They both jump.

Shishido's laundry is done.

"Your laundry is done," he says, just as Shishido goes, "My laundry is done."

They both laugh a little. Shishido a rough chuckle, Ohtori a hysterical little gurgle that's just as bad as anything else that's come out of his mouth these past forty minutes.

Jolting into motion Shishido answers the buzzer and throws open the door. A waft of laundry detergent lingers on the colorful bundle of clothes he begins hauling out, shoveling them all heedlessly inside before zipping it up and lugging it onto his narrow shoulder. After grabbing his PSP and the bag of candies, he sort of waves over his shoulder at Ohtori, calling:

"See you Tuesday," and then he's out the door. He doesn't look back. The night swallows him up easily, leaving Ohtori alone, lips parted, to stare after him in nothing short of dismay.

There's no way that could have gone any worse. He made a complete, blubbering fool of himself,  _twice_ , being unable to master the stupid laundry machine and then proceeding with molesting Shishido verbally.

 _He's never talking to me again_ , Ohtori thinks to himself and is appalled to feel his eyes burn.  _Idiot_ , he adds.

About twenty minutes later his machine buzzes, too. Ohtori hauls it all onto the table and begins folding it, creating two piles: one for him and one for Hiyoshi. After stacking them carefully into his bag, he exits the laundromat, too, beginning the long, dismal trek homewards.

* 

"I thought you'd got lost and died somewhere," Hiyoshi says, looking a little worried when Ohtori finally steps through the front door, half frozen. Already in his pajamas, he's holding a mug between his hands, which steams in the chilly air of their apartment. Seeing Ohtori's clattering teeth, he promptly swaps the mug for Ohtori's bag of laundry.

"Thanks," Ohtori says, inhaling deeply. It's tea. Taking a sip and not caring it scalds his tongue, Ohtori clumsily toes out of his shoes before advancing.

"What happened?" Hiyoshi asks, setting the bag down and zipping it open.

Ohtori sinks down on the couch, legs sprawling. "Our laundromat was trashed, I had to go to the other one."

"All the way across town?" 

"Yes," Ohtori says, head drooping. "Shishido was there."

A pause.

"Oh, no," Hiyoshi says, sounding more worried than ever. "You didn't try to talk to him… Did you?"

Ohtori shrugs. Then nods.

"Oh. Oh, no. What did you say?"

Ohtori tells him. Everything.

Afterwards, Hiyoshi just kneels there with a pile of laundry in his hands, staring at Ohtori not unlike the way Shishido was more than half an hour ago.

"You're never getting laid," Hiyoshi says, matter of factly. "You know that, don't you."

Ohtori just glares at him half-heartedly.

Hiyoshi shrugs. "Just saying."

*

Tuesday finds Ohtori back at Life Drawing, choked up with nerves and feeling more than a little silly because of it. So made a total moron of himself in front of person he's totally head over heels for and somehow that equals the end of the world. It's just so… ridiculous. He doesn't even know Shishido, probably doesn't even show up on the latter's social radar. Likely Shishido has forgotten all about it, but here Ohtori sits, palms sweating and heart in his throat, having had nothing but that incident on his mind since it happened nearly a week ago.

That and having to draw him again. Not for himself, because he can't help himself. But because he  _has_  to. He has to and he needs to succeed. 

He has to be able to draw Shishido, not only for his own mental sanity, but because he has to for class, for marks, to prove himself to others. He needs to because this is what he wants to do, professionally, for the rest of his life.

And an emotional block just doesn't fit in that plan.

Just as he takes a deep, steadying breath, calming himself, a familiar voice speaks up behind him.

"Did you manage to conquer your laundry last week?"

Ohtori jolts, head whipping around to look at him.

Shishido stands there, real and amazing. An eyebrow is arched playfully as he grins down at Ohtori. Drooped all over his side is Jirou, looking sort of bleary even though he's definitely awake now. Despite himself, Ohtori flushes and feels like the world's most ginormous moron because of it. He can't even interact with Shishido normally without dissolving like some love-sick teenager.

Eventually he manages a crooked smile and a nod. "Aa, I did. Thank you again," he says, voice strangled.

Shishido sort of ' _psh_ 'es at him and flaps his hands as though waving if off.

"I'm not following," Jirou speaks up, propping himself more upright by slinging an arm around Shishido's shoulder. The tips of his curls tickle Shishido's jaw.

Ohtori resists the urge to scowl.

"I had to beat up a washing machine for him," Shishido says by way of explanation, the corner of his mouth curling.

"Huh?" Jirou goes.

But both he and Shishido exchange a glance and grin. Shishido sharp and playful, Ohtori shy and pleased to have even something so small as this that is theirs, a joke only the two of them get. Even if it is just about laundry, it's  _theirs_. And that, just knowing that they share this, bolsters his confidence.

"In my defense, it was a really tough washing machine," Ohtori answers. 

Shishido laughs, loud and unrestrained. Spontaneous. "Sure it was," he says.

"Was too!" Ohtori insists, "It  _robbed_  me!"

Another laugh is his reward, clear but gravelly. Ohtori feels himself beam with satisfaction. The knowledge that he made Shishido laugh not once but twice lights a warm, glowing sensation in his chest. As Shishido slows down to chuckles, they smile at each other, just a little. This is bad, some rational part of Ohtori points out. But all the rest of him doesn't care. Not anymore. Shishido  _sought_  him out,  _talked_  to him. Despite Ohtori making the biggest fool of himself, ever. And then he made Shishido laugh.

Shishido is beautiful when he laughs.

For a moment Ohtori sits there, feeling as though he's swallowed the sun. Sits there looking up at this boy he barely knows thinking,  _shh, hold still, I need to draw you like this._

And then it falls apart as Jirou says something, something utterly unrelated and obviously completely lodged into their own little world, something Ohtori is not a part of and never will be. To which Shishido answers, makes a lopsided sort of grin and then it is time for him to go and… Ten minutes later Ohtori clenches his jaw, loathing himself, because nothing's changed. His cheeks are burning even though the attic is decidedly chilly, despite the valiantly whirring heater.

Shishido's skin is drawn into goosebumps, nipples hardened and belly taut as he suppresses shivers.  

Ohtori tries, he really tries, but it's all aimless chicken-scratch. His focus is on the arch of his hipbones, the way his stomach is a concave hollow between them, the tantalizing trail of dark hair leading down. And that's good, sorta, but then it completely gets bungled up around the ribs, the shoulders and how those two are supposed to form a whole of the same living body. Even when he forces his attention towards the whole, the sketch is too unbalanced to salvage when the first pose is over and Shishido fetches his yukata.

The teacher purposefully checks his result out first. Expression neutral, he peeks over Ohtori's shoulder where he's still trying to make his pencil create balance in the sketch. 

And then, without saying anything, he walks away.

Which is ten times worse than if he would have said anything at all, however negative.

*

After class Ohtori can only wait, resigned, when the professor asks him to.

All around him the rest of the class disperses, Shishido included (without any further consideration towards Ohtori, at that. Just gone). He receives curious looks and quite some cross ones, too, of those who figure he's going to play the teacher's pet again. If only they knew.

"Ah, Ohtori-kun," the professor goes, nodding sagely when they are quite alone. "There you are."

Ohtori allows his face to smooth into his habitual polite smile. A gesture that comes as naturally as his art does --well, the way it used to. It's an expression honed to perfection through years of directing it at his father. His flawless shield.

It even catches the professor off guard for a moment, who seems at loss as how to proceed when presented with such a compliant and attentive facade when he's the bearer of bad news.

Eventually Ohtori even prompts, "You wanted to speak to me, sensei?"

A nod. "Hm," the older man goes. "Yes, I do. I suspect you know about what?"

For an instant Ohtori goes cold, fearing that he got it wrong. That it is worse than the skill of his art. That, somehow, he's betrayed himself. That the man can tell that the few flawless strokes he  _does_  manage to create might as well have been traced with his fingers instead of graphite. How he feels during these terrible, completely awful and wonderful sessions.

But then he just nods some more, like old men sometimes are inclined to-- as though agreeing to his own internal monologue.

"You are the most talented artist I've ever had the privilege to teach," he says, squinting up at Ohtori frankly. "And I do not say this lightly."

Ohtori can feel himself gape. 

"Which is why it is such a shame that lately…" his face wrinkles and Ohtori flinches, cursing himself a million times over yet again. 

"I am sorry, sensei," he says quietly. 

"Why?" comes the response, quite genuinely baffled. "Don't be. I know you are doing your best. But I fear this blockade won't just disappear if you fail to address it properly."

Privately, Ohtori can only muse to himself just how badly he wants to address this…  _blockade_ … properly. Instead all he can up with is: "Uhm."

More nodding as if he's just said something of remarkable intellect. "Yes quite," he agrees. "You seem to struggle only with this particular body type. I admit it poses a challenge to accurately capture someone who's decidedly slight and lacking in curves. One is forced to be astute and accurate with every single line one makes. Only constant and repeated practice will allow you to properly grasp it."

He says nothing.

"Shishido is not staying, we managed to retain him mostly by a stroke of enormous luck because our previous model for his body type cancelled. Which is why he started rather late in the semester. After the Winter break we will move on to other models."

"Oh," Ohtori says, still not sure where this is going. He knew they'd get different models, obviously, so why…?

A pause.

"Perhaps you should enquire whether he's prepared to do private sittings for you."

Ohtori makes a noise.

The professor gives him an odd look before continuing. "As far as I've gathered he's new to this, but I suspect that he may be pursued if you offer him a fair rate." 

He seriously doubts that. Anybody who so much as bothers to look at his face during his sittings can see he's  _not_  happy doing this.

"I can see you are about to inclined to reject this notion, Ohtori," the professor points out quellingly. "But I implore you to carefully consider it, please."

Reluctant, Ohtori nods.

Then the old man elbows him, sharing a conspiratorial wink. "I, ah, suppose that you'd be much happier if it was a pretty girl, ne?"

Ohtori doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.   

*

"Hm," is all Hiyoshi has to offer in response to Ohtori's ever growing list of woes.

Both of them are in the kitchen, doing the dishes. Ohtori washes a plate and then passes it on to Hiyoshi to dry. For a minute everything is quiet but for the slosh of his hands in the suds, the squeaks of Hiyoshi's towel on the plate. 

"Are you going to?" Hiyoshi asks, voice absurdly loud after the pause.

Hands faltering, Ohtori looks at him questioningly.

Hiyoshi keeps his eyes with single-minded concentration on the plate he's drying as he clarifies: "Ask him. Shishido, I mean."

The spoon he has between his fingers slips with a loud plop and a splatter back into the water, before  _cluncking_  on the bottom of the sink. "A-ask him?" Ohtori splutters, "To  _sit_  for me?"

 _Naked?_  isn't what he quite dares to add. The mere idea is enough to turn his knees to water! Saying it out loud would make it seem all the more… possible. Shishido. In his room. Naked. Alone. Ohtori bites his bottom lip, hard.  _Think unsexy thoughts_ , Ohtori,  _think unsexy thoughts_. Dirty soap water, Hiyoshi's smelly socks, bicycles, toenail clippers, …

A calm nod.

Ohtori laughs, then chokes. "No! Of course not!" he says, shaking his head wildly.

This time Hiyoshi does look at him. "Why not?" he asks, expression unreadable. He seems perfectly serious.

Shaking water off his hands Ohtori turns towards him fully. "You expect me to walk up to him after class and ask him to  _take his clothes off_  for me but, hey, I'll pay you?"

"Yes."

"You are being ridiculous," Ohtori tells him, frowning. Shakes his head again for good measure. No way.

"Seriously, he does it  _now_  in front of a whole group of people. Doing it in private seems like the preferable option, if you ask me," Hiyoshi points out. "Besides, it's about art, right?"

"Yes! No? I--  _agh_!" Ohtori yanks at his hair. "You're missing the point!" 

"Nooooo," Hiyoshi goes, drawing the word out as though talking to a five-year old. " _You_  are missing the point. You'd be doing this for your art, to get over this… block. Isn't that important?"

At that, Ohtori has to bite back sudden anger. Hiyoshi truly has no damn idea just  _how_  important this is to him. There's nothing Ohtori remembers wanting more than being a professional artist. How much he gave up to even try. How desperately he has to succeed. Has to. Because for him, there's no turning back. If he fails here, he'll be left with nothing. No other hopes, no other dreams. And nobody willing to catch him if he should trip and fall. He risked everything to do this.

Would refusing to… ask -and dammit, Hiyoshi is right, so right, it's about  _art_ , not nudity and sex- be worth the cost?

For a moment Ohtori seriously considers it, asking Shishido to pose for him. Tries to formulate the request, the other's possible response. The expression on his face. And-- no. No way.

After a few painful heartbeats Ohtori ventures: "I could draw you".

Hiyoshi fits the profile of Young Make model. Heck, he's even nearly the same built, height and weight. The regular martial arts sessions make him fairly toned, too. 

"I'm not taking my clothes off for you," Hiyoshi replies instantly. "Forget it."

Ohtori bristles, stung. "It's not about-"

"Sex. I know," Hiyoshi bites back. "It's about art and that is why you need a professional model."

They glower at each other.

"And neither am I going to indulge over something you're being absolutely stupid about," he adds, lips curling. "Stop avoiding your issues and try to  _face_  them for once."

At that, Ohtori leaves the kitchen, fuming. 

Hiyoshi has no damn idea just how much of 'facing his issues' he's done lately.

And he's sick of it.

*

Later that evening Hiyoshi knocks on his door, opens the door when Ohtori answers. Backlighted by the light of the living room in contrast to Ohtori's darkened room, he looks feral, wild. They look at each other for a moment, Ohtori turning down Chopin on his laptop.

Almost apologetically Hiyoshi holds out the cordless phone. "Your mother," he says.

Ohtori blinks, hard. Then holds out his hand.

After the door clicks shut he says: "Moshi moshi?"

"Choutarou-chan," his mother breathes.

"Hello, okaa-san," he answers, holding his voice level and neutral. Polite. Nothing more, she deserves not even his anger.

A tense silence. She knows him well enough to recognize the hurt and betrayal, his absolute inability to understand.

"How- how are you?" she asks. She, too, sounds polite and more or less composed. 

"I am well, thank you."

"Oh," she goes, after a fraught moment where she obviously hoped for more. "That is good to hear. And--"

"I have to go, okaa-san," he says instead.

"Yes, of course." Ohtori can imagine her, standing by the window in the gleaming kitchen, black hair bundled up hight and neat. Long, elegant fingers picking imaginary lint of her dress. "College is keeping you busy, then."

By his right knee lies the sketch he was working on. The litheness of Shishido's back in charcoal is almost flooded by the twilight of his room. 

"Hai," he answers, suppressing a wry smile. "It is."

"Is it going well, at least?"

His fingers pick up the drawing. Holds it out to catch the feeble light of the screen. "Goodbye, okaa-san."

"… I-- yes, goodbye."

*

He takes nobody's advice.

Instead his pencil falters on the smooth line of Shishido's thigh, his breath hitching at the the reality of how slender his legs are- enough so that Ohtori could curve his hands around them perfectly, a thumb at the font, palms spanning the sides and fingers curling around the backs. A muscle strains under the skin where he braces on his right leg, his dominant leg, a lovely dusky shadow underscoring the hollow next to it for Ohtori to draw.

He doesn't. Instead he sits there and looks, not so much numb with desire as with indecision. That and exhaustion. He couldn't sleep after the conversation with his mother. So he laid in bed and tried to imagine what it would be like if he'd had someone -Shishido- in bed with him. The heat of his body, his long hair getting caught between them, the sensation of his body tucked against him, relaxed. He's never shared a bed with anybody, ever. 

The session ends and everybody packs up, ready to move on the their next classes. Ohtori has Traditional Media next, two more hours of practical courses.

As always, Shishido stops by Jirou.

Ohtori doesn't know what to make of them. They're awfully close, too close for him to be comfortable with. Extremely tactile with each other, closer than simply good friends. Shishido stands behind Jirou, looking at the latter's drawing of him. Both of them just watch it, Jirou not really leaning back into Shishido, but the back of his head catching on the fabric of his sweater nevertheless. Shishido's hair is long enough that when he leans over to peer at it more closely, it glides forward like water, slipping over Jirou's shoulders in turn.

"I'm sick of drawing your skinny ass," Jirou says, sighing mournfully. 

Shishido snorts, stands up straight again. "Complain to Gakuto, was his idea and all," is what he says. He tugs at Jirou's shoulder. "Get up."

"Yeah," Jirou agrees, half falling out of his chair.

Ohtori remains seated, as always, half-disgusted with himself for eavesdropping for being so starved for any sort of information at all about Shishido.

"It was not a bad idea," Jirou says after a moment. 

"I suppose," is all Shishido answers, curtly.

Jirou smiles, but it's an odd smile. Not happy, not sad, knowing yet vague. After a moment he simply mutters, "Your hair is in my face. Here." He bares his left arm. Reveals a black hair-tie sitting around his fine boned wrist. Like he's used to carrying them around for Shishido.

That all by itself hurts more than Shishido ruffling his friend's blond hair, his rough smile, before taking it and making a high ponytail. The hand on Jirou's shoulder as they leave.

Ohtori has never had that.

Hiyoshi is the closest friend he's ever had. And, even if they haven't been friends for barely a few months, Ohtori really likes and values Hiyoshi. But he's never had anybody be so close to him to know his habits, to have pre-emptive responses to them, to reach for him and simply touch him because they could. Even his sister wasn't able to tell the difference between his real smile and the one he used when nothing else was left to him. They never bathed together, like Shishido and Jirou apparently did when they were kids even when they are obviously not even siblings.

Smile. Do what everybody expects you to. Hide all the rest behind closed doors or a practiced expression.

And then Ohtori went and did what he wanted.

Always the disappointment. Always second best, any and all accomplishments either already having been done (better and first) by his sister, or not significant at all. Not to his father anyway. Consequently not to his mother, either. Only his grandmother who came to see when his painting was hung up in kindergarten. Only his grandmother who attended his first piano solo. Only his grandmother who didn't say anything when Ohtori announced he wanted to be a professional artist, just gave him money after -alone in his room, hard cash in his hand. Smiled at him.

He can almost resent Shishido, for this.

For making him realize he is capable of feeling lonely.

*

It just gets worse.

First the painful clue-by-four that he most certainly has a sexual awareness.

Then that Shishido is… well, nice isn't the way he'd put it, but the sort of person you are drawn to and just want to talk to.

And now, this.

Shishido's current pose isn't an easy one. Half the class is frowning and surreptitiously reaching for their erasers when the professor isn't looking (he encourages them strongly to refrain from using erasers. Ohtori never carries one, not even now).

Ohtori's hand is suspended above his blank page. In a moment, he will make various thumbnails sketches. Right now all he wants is to look at Shishido, look at him because he's worth looking at. The pose isn't one of elegance or one of Shishido's characteristic dynamic ones. He's lying on his side, curled in a fetal position. Knees drawn up, shoulders hunched protectively, one arm curled to his chest. The other close, too, but -and this is what makes Ohtori just sit there and  _feel_ \- his palm is up, open and bare, finger curling not… not quite… almost reaching. Beckoning. Pleading. 

It's a vulnerable pose.

There's too many lovely things to look at, for Ohtori. From the way his buttocks hollow with his legs drawn up like that, to the ridge of his spine. He likes that, a lot, the individual bumps that are revealed, the large one at the bottom of his neck descending rather like a cadence of music notes to smaller knobs as his spine continues on down, to where at long last it smoothes inward near the small of his back. The dark crescents his lashes make on his cheekbones, his relaxed lips -ever so slightly parted. His hair, fanning out around his head like a splatter of velvety paint. Even just the curl of those fingers, which seem to ask for something, the uneven fingernails, scarred knuckles and the delicate wrist. Arteries dark and blue where they sit under the skin. 

Shishido has done many lovely poses, but this one hits Ohtori in a way the others haven't.

Always the building physical urge, the arousal and the need to touch him, smear his mouth across those sharp shoulders, feel the muscles strain under his fingers. Taste him, feel him, mark him, own him.

Now all he wants is to reach back, to take that hand and fold it between his own, tuck himself behind Shishido and hold him. Shishido never before evoked the impression he needed anybody to hold him, always sort of angry and distant along his brows, unimpressed at his mouth. Now he does.

His face is relaxed, smoothed clear. Maybe because he can close his eyes, need not face them.  

Just the idea of being able to hold him is all he has right now.

It is not okay at all.

 _I can't do this_ , Ohtori thinks. His eyes are warm, his stomach hollow.  _You don't even know him!_

In the end he covers four pages in a feverish burst with thumbnails, pencil flying. They're the sort of sketches that make no sense to anybody but himself, often even a single, individual line to capture one little detail. It is only because he knows what he was marking down that he'll be able to decipher it, later. 

The class ends after that. Ohtori is dizzy, light-headed and unsteady. Feels sick. Wants to go home.

Even as Shishido reappears, dressed in casual street clothes, he can't shake the sensation that he has to-  _has to_  - go and press him close. His hair is loose, long and gleaming and beautiful, spilling over his otherwise scruffy, faded blue sweater.

It's his last week. Ohtori doesn't know what to do about that, so he does nothing. Just sits there uselessly. Watches on as Shishido crosses towards Jirou and is intercepted before he can reach him.

Ohtori blinks, sits up straight.

"Hello," the guy says.

"Hi," Shishido returns wearily.

"This is your last week, correct?" the other asks.

"… Yeah?" Shishido makes it a question.

Next to Ohtori, Jirou is sitting up straight, too, dark eyes on the exchange.

"Hh," a small nod. 

What was his name again? Ohtori nearly breaks his brain trying to recall -he knows it, he does, thinks their fathers might have had vague dealings in the past. A handsome guy, sort of painfully perfect and frightfully rich. Light hair, like his own but a harsher, more remarkable hue. A sculpted face, slanted eyes and a beauty mark under his eye.

"Would you consider doing private sessions?" he asks, quite smoothly.

Like that. That's the way he was supposed to ask, himself. Nothing more to it.

Shishido sort of blanches and then manages to squeak out: "P-private sessions?" 

"Yes."

"Er," Shishido goes, going a furious red. For a brief moment his eyes flash to Jirou who sits there doing a 'don't look at me' shrug. At last he sort of gathers himself and manages to say: "I've never… I mean. I'm not a professional. I just," -eyes drop to the floor- "really need the money."

"I see," the other just looks at him, considering.

A wry face, Shishido sort of tugs at his hair absent-mindedly, obviously distressed with the whole situation. "I don't have any rates or anything, I'm not sure I even wanna-"

"I'll triple the hourly rate you receive now," the guy offers. 

"Uh," Shishido goes, looking severely tempted. 

"Look, Classical Art is not my major," the guy says, "But I make it a point to excel at everything. I need the practice over the winter break."

Shishido sort of makes a face at 'excel at everything' and stands there, apprehensive and edging back.

"Here," a card is proffered to him. After a slight hesitation, Shishido takes it. "The name's Atobe. You can always call me if you change your mind." And with that, he turns on his heel, a smart, elegant move and makes for the door.

"I'll do it," Shishido suddenly says, voice croaking. He doesn't look at Atobe as he says it, just stands there, eyes on the card and face blank.

Ohtori's stomach drops all the floors down, through earth's crust and down into the core where it dissolves in a slick, slippery sludge. 

Atobe Keigo. Single heir to one of Japan's most famous and prosperous CEO's. Notoriously talented at everything he turns his hand to, wickedly intelligent and not a single physical flaw on him. Asking Shishido to sit for him, privately. Unclothed, all of him bared for Atobe's eyes alone. Because he 'makes it a point to excel at everything'. And here Ohtori, who  _needs_  to do this, the last damn straw he's desperately clutching, too much of a coward to even consider asking.

Then again, he cannot offer Shishido a triple rate. Not anymore. 

Atobe simply smiles and nods at him. "Excellent. I shall call to make further arrangements." 

A nod, Shishido's eyes still averted.

 _Don't, if you don't want to_ , Ohtori thinks at him.

After Atobe leaves, Shishido goes over to Jirou to help him pack and carry his large sketch folder for him. As they leave, Jirou takes Shishido fingers in his own and leads him like a small child from the room.

Through it all Ohtori sits, doing nothing.

*

That night, when Ohtori goes home, he doesn't say much.

Hiyoshi doesn't ask, but prepares one of his favorite dishes -which Ohtori cannot even manage to eat half of. As soon as he can without seeming ungrateful, Ohtori excuses himself and locks himself into his room.

Sits on the edge of his bed, breathing hard. His fingers begin to shake. His eyes ache, slick and hot and unfamiliar.

Atobe.

Atobe did what he should and could not.

That and the sudden need slamming like a well-placed kick into his gut. He was already half-hard, hating himself for it, but the idea was there. Shishido warm and breathing, just like he was in that pose. Curled up on Ohtori's bed. Carefully he'd drape himself against him -Shishido's back against his chest, his buttocks snug in his lap and the back of his thighs draped against his legs. Ohtori's lips on his nape and a hand splayed flat on that taut belly. Just that at first, holding him, warm and secure. Shishido would relax against him, twine fingers with his. Grow hard when Ohtori'd mouth along the edge of his jaw, hard enough for Ohtori to curve his hand over, rolling his palm -like he was doing to himself now. Enough to wake up, enough to turn around and spread his legs for Ohtori to settle in-between to, wrapping around his waist. Lips parting against his own.

After that it sort of gets lost in a myriad of vague impressions -the sharp jut of his hipbones, the strong thighs, the rise and fall of his chest. Ohtori bites his bottom lip enough to taste blood, refusing to make any sound at all as he presses fingers around himself. 

Shishido would look at him. Eyes dark and consuming, demanding everything from him. Hungry. That is the last coherent image that lingers, Shishido's eyes, fierce and consuming -asking him. Needing.

He comes with a muffled gasp, shuddering and curling in on himself as if shielding himself from some hurt. His orgasm wrings itself out of his belly, harsh and cruel, then sort of sweet as it settles into aftershocks. His head swims. His lip is numb with pain, bruised.

Guilt.

He just lays there, come staining his hand, staring at the wall.

When he does get up at last it is to clean himself up, drag the backs of his arms across his face. Only to get distracted, still aching, by the open sketchbook.

Shishido, curled in on himself.

Slowly, almost without thinking, Ohtori stands up and goes towards his easel. Looks at it. Looks at the sketchbook. Looks at his prepared canvases. Picks up an untouched, horizontal one and sets it up right.

Finds a pencil. 

Begins to draw.

*

"I'll take care of the laundry," Ohtori says to Hiyoshi Thursday evening just a little after ten.

A pause.

Hiyoshi turns a page of his book, expression neutral, almost blank. "It is my turn this week," he merely points out.

More silence. Ohtori squirms. Really, he shouldn't have said anything at all. Just should have grabbed the damn laundry and made a run for it. And even though Hiyoshi is completely right and not even looking at him he's pure evil incarnated in that very moment. Slowly Ohtori edges towards the huge bag filled with laundry, eyeing it with determination. 

"Don't worry about it," Hiyoshi interrupts, all polite. "I'll take care of it tomorrow."

Ohtori grinds his teeth. "Really, it's no problem. I'll do it."

"No no," Hiyoshi murmurs, turning another page before resting his hand on it to keep it in place. He looks up, demeanor perfectly honorable. "Besides," -he makes a show of shaking his sleeve back and checking his watch- "it is rather late to go now, don't you think?"

Jaw clenching, Ohtori forces a smile through locked teeth. "Please,  _allow_  me."

Another of those pauses. Just Hiyoshi, sitting there, saying and doing nothing at all yet managing to rub Ohtori's face in just how pathetically desperate he's gotten that he's seriously considering  _stealing_  the damned laundry. Just so he can go, hoping…

"I want to, Hiyoshi-kun," Ohtori grounds out. "To thank you."

"Thank me for what?" Hiyoshi asks, voice dead-pan.

Ohtori beams at him, not his usual polite smile, not a genuine smile, but the fakest one he can manage. "For being such a delightful roommate."

"Touché," Hiyoshi says, nodding. "Well, if you insist." He turns back to his book.

Allowing a silent fist pump, Ohtori scrambles to get his shoes and coat on. Just as he's shouldered the bag and is checking his pockets for money and keys, Hiyoshi adds: 

"Don't molest him."

Ohtori slams the door.

*

An hour later he slouches in defeat on a plastic chair in the laundromat. 

What he was expecting, he wasn't sure. But somehow the very likely possibility that Shishido would simply not be there was not a part of it. In retrospect, the chances of catching him here again, same place, same day, same hour are not very promising at all.

And after tomorrow Shishido will be gone. 

Ohtori sits thinking about this. The concept of this slithers around his heart, constricts. Shishido, one last day, eyes challenging as he sits unmoving, naked. Then, gone. Something builds up in his chest, something that swells and can't be stopped. Even fighting it down, it sort of hitches past his lips in a dry sob. It startles him enough to reel back and rock his chair. This… is no longer a simple infatuation.

Shishido will be gone because he was too much of a coward to do anything about it. Too much of a coward to even try and be his friend. Too much of a coward, even, to simply ask him to pose in private.

Not too late yet, however.

Can't give up now.

Can't back down.

*

Come morning Ohtori throws open his bedroom door and marches out.

Hiyoshi takes one look at him and says: "You're going to do something incredibly stupid and crazy, right?"

"Right," Ohtori says.

"Good luck," Hiyoshi answers, almost smiling.

*

Fate is against him.

Ohtori leaves his Literature class early, slipping out red-faced and wincing with shame. Never before has he shirked his academic responsibilities. Especially not to ask some other guy to strip and sit around naked for him in private. Seeing as that is  _exactly_  what he's doing, Ohtori's decided to just go and… do it. Before he loses his nerve. He'd been hoping to catch him before the class starts, so he doesn't have to look Shishido in the face  _after_  he's spend two hours staring at him while unsuccessfully attempting to suppress an erection.

As it is, Shishido is late. 

Everybody is already seated, ready and looking around bewildered at the lack of model when Shishido finally half-falls through the door gasping: "Sorry!" cheeks flushed from the cold and out of breath. He's clearly had to run. Harsh, deep exhales fall from his lips. His eyes are clear, a bit wild, the smell of winter clinging to him.

Ohtori feels himself start to blush, his belly tighten. This is starting to get ridiculous -the guy's only barely walked into the damn room. 

"That's alright, Shishido," the professor says, smiling indulgently.

Shishido closes the door and hurries behind the partition. Ohtori hangs his head. Dammit.

To make everything worse, Shishido seems to be…  _more_ , than usual. More  _what_ , Ohtori isn't quite sure. Maybe it is the restless energy in him. Some trace of adrenaline still chasing through him. Even as he stands still in the center of the room Ohtori imagines that he could feel it if he were to touch Shishido -a low, thrumming fire caught just below his skin. Not only that, but it's there in his muscles, the way they move under his skin as he shifts. Poised on the brink of some building motion, like a cat holding still right before it springs, claws extended. His hair is still a bit tangled from his headlong rush to get to the class on time.

Worst, it takes him a while to calm his breathing. He's not actually panting, he seems to possess a good condition, but his chest is noticeably rising and falling, his mouth parted. 

It isn't just that Ohtori wants to tackle him and simply  _have_  him. Instead he's sort of struck numb with it. Just  _watching_  him and loving that he is able to, even if it is a special sort of torture.

Even though he hadn't counted on it, Ohtori is somewhat disappointed that he doesn't have a miraculous revival of his usual artistic flair for Shishido's last session. Before he knows it, it is over. Shishido goes to change, while the class starts to pack. When he reemerges the professor makes it a point to thank him for his work, to thank him for being willing to fill in so late in the semester. The students chime in and Shishido stands there, ears red and spluttering. 

Slowly, the attic empties. It takes longer than it usually does. Most people go to thank and wish Shishido happy holidays, to which he splutters some more. Ohtori stands to the side, waiting, heart in his throat as he watches on. Tries to ignore Jirou hovering nearby, giving him weird looks.

And then, just as he draws in a deep, steadying breath and takes a step forward, Atobe appears out of nowhere. Huge rolls of paper are clutched under his arm. He must've been preparing them in the supply office just now. 

"Shishido," he goes, coming up behind him.

"Gah," Shishido jumps. "Don't creep up on me."

Atobe raises a rather unimpressed eyebrow. Shishido glowers at him. They are about the same height, same built, but couldn't look any different than they do; Atobe groomed to perfection, impeccably poised and not a hair out of place while Shishido is dressed in well-worn jeans, even older sneakers and a hoodie a size or two too big for him. His hair is still windblown -scattered over his shoulders and free down his back. But they do posses a measure of the same natural confidence. 

"Seems like you have a bad conscience to me," Atobe sniffs. "Anyway, I wanted to check whether you were still okay for tomorrow." 

"Oh, yeah," Shishido nods. "So, at one right?"

"Yes, if you still can."

"Yeah, no problem," he hitches his backpack to his shoulder. "C'mon Jirou."

And, as though it is perfectly natural, Atobe accompanies Shishido and his friend out of the classroom, talking easily. Ohtori can only watch them go, too dismayed and not confident enough to interrupt them mid-conversation. Not with Atobe and Jirou right there, watching him  _trying_  to ask and splutter and blush and stutter.

Shishido leaves.

And Ohtori just stands there, choking on it.

He's not sure, but he thinks Shishido's eyes find his for a brief moment. Hold them until he passes through the door. Leaving Ohtori alone in the room with his regret.

*

Hiyoshi doesn't need to ask.

He doesn't ask and Ohtori doesn't cry.

*

It might be a relief to cry, to just… let it go. 

But he can't.

Even though it is there -a squirming sensation right in the center of his torso: under his ribs, but above his navel. It sits there, putrid and rotting. It lingers around his around the edges of his mouth, at the back of his tongue, clotting around his words. 

 _Damn you_ , is what strangles all his rational thoughts.  _Damn you_. That he just stood there and let Shishido walk away. 

 _Was it worth it?_  He demands himself.  _Was it worth cosseting your pride, your skewed self-image to let him go?_

Was it worth not trying?

He can't cry because he knows the answer.

It wasn't.

*

Knowing this makes that he goes on.

Silent and sick at heart, but he goes. All blame rests at his own two stumbling feet. Because even if the circumstances were the opposite of what he was hoping for, it doesn't compensate for simply not doing anything. Most of all he hates that he let this happen even after he swore to live for himself, to move beyond his own passiveness when he left home. Only to trip and crash as soon as he encounters the first hurdle.

Be that as it may, Ohtori is not to sort to lie down and admit defeat. This, he lost. His own fault. His own damn fault. And though it is early, he's convinced this'll haunt him always -letting go the first person he fell for without a fight. No matter how brief or abrupt the acquaintance. He didn't even try.

In the privacy of his room Choutarou draws him. Everything is clear when he cradles the image of Shishido in his mind. As soon as he attempts to translate this to paper he falters, struggles, but draw he does. Poses Shishido never did in class. The sort he'd only ever do… for… the sort you'd only see if you'd be close. In private. Perhaps it's a form of depravity that he draws him like this,  _imagines_  him like this, trying to shape the lines of his body, his face, his eyes with reverence and longing.

Even as he slowly undresses him with his art, Shishido's eyes remain the same.

Fierce, challenging. 

Almost a question: Is that it? What are you waiting for?

And Ohtori answers by drawing him again. Over and over until his fingers cramp around his pencil. 

*

On Saturday Ohtori switches his charcoal briefly for a pen to labor over a history essay. Hiyoshi is out, probably teaching kids how to properly beat other kids up -in style (Hiyoshi would personally kick his ass up and down the stairs if he knew he was thinking about it like that). So it's just him sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of tea gone long cold and the soothing strains of some classic radio channel.

It's Chopin -his favorite- and as the strains of his Nocturne in E flat major fill the tiny apartment something in him thaws, relaxes. Until he's just sitting there with his eyes closed, thinking,  _yes, maybe now I can…_  and then the ultimate crime is committed: the symphony is slaughtered right during it's climax. Gone, dead, choked off, replaced by a horrible nasal whine announcing with forced cheer:

Hello and thank you for listening, that was Chopin's Nocturne in E flat major. Time for the one o'clock news- 

One o'clock.

_"So, at one right?"_

_"Yes, if you still can."_

_"Yeah, no problem,"_

Right now. Shishido is there right now. Now, taking off his clothes, piece by piece, expression blazing, challenging; I dare you. Right now. For Atobe's eyes alone. Completely alone with him. What if… what if Atobe were to try and… touch him? 

_No, your arm, lift it like this -yes perfect._

His hands on him, Shishido's skin under his fingers. No, no, Shishido would punch him, no doubt. Ohtori, almost despite himself, smiles a little. He would. Unless… Atobe's very handsome. Smart and amusing. Wealthy. Shakes his head, the chances of Shishido being… even liking guys… are unlikely. Probably he has a pretty, tomboyish girlfriend that can stand her own. 

Atobe though… chances are he  _does_. Like guys. Seriously, he wears leopard prints and lace. Together. And displays an unhealthy preference for lavender and baby blue.

Ten past one. Shishido is… definitely undressed now. Lithe body perched on a chair, maybe, or hands reaching for the ceiling so he's all corded muscle and ribs and hips and concave belly -and Atobe is looking at him right now.

Ohtori finds himself gritting his teeth, pages of his immaculate essay crumpling between his fingers, unable to stand the idea as a wave jealousy so powerful washes over him it rises his gorge.

And then he realizes it could've been him, watching, had he only dared to ask.

*

It's stupid that he feels lonely when he's not even lost anyone. How can you lose someone when you never had them in the first place?

But he does and after doing nothing during the weekend but draw until the cramp flows up into his wrists, forearms and finally even shoulders, he puts the pencil down. Closes the sketchbook. Joins Hiyoshi on the couch to watch a documentary about the possible existence of extraterrestrial life.

His roommate doesn't say anything, but he's awfully generous in sharing the bag of jelly candy and keeping Ohtori's tea mug filled.

*

On Monday classes start again. 

Ohtori packs the correct books for his classes, shoulders his huge map for his practical courses. He's got Still-life and Typography today and his bag is heavy with paints and brushes. 

A heavy exhaustion smothers him, causing a light tremor in his hands that he cannot stop. Only when he has to sit down to catch his breath whilst scaling the stairs to the second floor does he realize he's not eaten anything but the candy Hiyoshi gave him and that cold, stale tea on Saturday. For a moment he expects to feel hungry, instead there's just deep well of weariness and some miserable sense of shame that he's allowed himself sink so low.

This is just plain dumb.

He toughs out the day, but once he gets home he hovers in the kitchen until Hiyoshi sighs and gets up to cook.

"Sorry," he mutters. "I didn't eat yesterday."

Hiyoshi sort of nods. "Being lovesick can do that," he murmurs.

A bowl clatters onto the countertop as Hiyoshi sets it down. The scent of ground beef fills the kitchenette as he opens a packet. The apartment is cold, even though there's a heater whirring and the kotatsu is plugged in. Hiyoshi's exhales make little misty clouds. 

Ohtori stares down at the back of Hiyoshi's head, unmoving, unable to breathe, unable to do anything but shake his head a little.

After a moment Hiyoshi sighs long-sufferingly, head sagging forward before turning to look at Ohtori slowly. The look on his friend's face prompts Ohtori to stutter: "I- I'm not-"

"Yes, Choutarou," Hiyoshi interrupts him, almost gently, "you are."

"I don't even know him," Ohtori tells him. It's easier to focus on that instead of the lump in his throat and the stinging behind his eyes.

"That's why they call it love at first sight," Hiyoshi simply says, before promptly turning around again as though embarrassed with himself for saying that.

Mouth open but voiceless, Ohtori frowns at his hands -still shaking. Love is… it's supposed to be a nice feeling. What he feels is… it's jagged and painful, unbearably heavy.

Hiyoshi doesn't say anything when Ohtori barely manages two bites before setting down his chopsticks.

*

For their last Advanced Life Drawing classes they draw each other.

Both models for this semester have retired and in less than four days the winter break begins.

Ohtori still feels sort of numb and confused, but has managed to eat the leftovers from yesterday's meal under Hiyoshi's watchful eye. The shaking has gone, though he remains listless.

Jirou is disturbingly pretty, now that he's forced to thoroughly study him. Even when he's slumped backwards and drooling a little. He dozed off about ten minutes into the session, pencil clattering from his fingers. It's actually sort of fun to capture the slack expression on his face and the awkward tilt of his head. Besides that, it hardly moves him. Right now Jirou is a subject, something fascinating to reproduce, but nothing more.

Ohtori remembers when he first saw Shishido appear from behind the screen wrapped in his yukata -as though someone kicked him,  _hard_. He doesn't want Hiyoshi to be right, not on this.

Part of him is unable to stop stealing glances at Atobe. He's partnering a young man with wavy blue hair, both of them chatting softly as they draw each other's portraits. Nothing seems different about him. No… glow. Of any sort. Then again Atobe always looks remarkably composed and aloof so it isn't an indication for anything, really.

"Ohtori-kun," the professor suddenly says, apparently standing right behind him.

Ohtori fumbles his pencil in surprise. 

"Good job. I like how you managed to capture the light glinting off his lips and… ah, spittle. Hm. Anyway, well done." He sounds terribly relieved to be able to say this once more.

Ohtori just hunches his shoulders and draws on.

*

After glancing through the window, Ohtori grimly decides to put on an extra sweater. Everything is layered under a delicate, glinting coating of hoarfrost. It shines gold under the artificial streetlights. Beautiful, in a cold way.

It's Friday evening and Ohtori has two whole weeks of vacation. Sort of. Also loads of essays and projects he has to do, not to mention the added stress of having to go and visit his family on Christmas. Not a happy prospect. 

Pulling a heavy cable-knit and positively monstrous -but warm!- sweater over his head, Ohtori walks into the small kitchen where Hiyoshi is peering dismally through his glasses at the electricity bill.

"I'm going out," Ohtori says.

Hiyoshi glances at the bulky bag slung over his shoulder. "You went twice already, Ohtori. I'll do it tomorrow."

Ohtori shrugs, pocketing his keys and some change. "It's okay. I insisted last week… and I need to get some fresh air."

After a moment of scrutiny, Hiyoshi nods. "Alright." Slants his eyes at the window. "It'll be fresh alright. Don't freeze."

Ohtori goes to the door to put on shoes, a coat, two scarves, a knit cap and gloves. 

"And take your phone!" Hiyoshi yells after him.

"Yes, okaa-san," Ohtori answers good-naturedly.

*

Despite the aid of the bulky sweater, Ohtori's teeth are still clattering when he shuffles into the laundromat. It's cold in there, too. Hushed and vacant in a way peculiar to early mornings, late evenings and the heart of winter. As though everything is holding its breath.

After stowing the laundry in a machine and pressing start, he inspects the vending machines in hope of something warm. Even bad instant coffee or tea would be welcome now. Disappointed, Ohtori retreats to a chair, huddling in on himself to preserve his body heat. Originally he intended to sketch some concepts for a project that is due after the break, but the cold is too fierce to even contemplate taking off his gloves. Instead he watches the hypnotic swirl of their clothes being tossed around by the washing machine.

Then the door opens, allowing a new draft of freezing wind to swoop in and gnaw at the small sliver of exposed nape where his cap and scarf fail to cover his neck. Annoyed, Ohtori, cranes to frown over his shoulder.

"Hi," Shishido says, sort of absentmindedly as he blows into his hands to thaw them. Then does a double-take, blinks… and smiles. "Hi, er-" he repeats, voice warm. "… Uhm.." an embarrassed laugh. "I realize I don't even know your name."

Ohtori doesn't know whether to laugh, cry or get on his knees and pray to the gods. Instead all he manages is to gape stupidly, mouth wide open in shock.

Shishido's smile slips a little and instead a crease appears between his brows. "Er. Yeah. Hey, you okay?" he asks, sort of carefully glancing Ohtori up and down. "You look kinda-" a vague flap at Ohtori.

"I'm sorry!" Ohtori all but yells, shooting out of his chair to stand up. Shishido backs up in surprise. "My name is Ohtori Choutarou! Nice to meet you!" he bows, way too low, way too frantic.

Standing there with the bag clutched to his chest, Shishido eyes him with a sort of abject fascination mingled with suspicion. "Er, okay," he says. "Ohtori. I'm Ryou, but I suppose you already knew that." 

"Yes!" Ohtori nods.

After another funny look in Ohtori's direction, Shishido walks further into the laundromat and chooses the machine next to Ohtori's.

It takes all his willpower to stop himself from just… babbling at Shishido. But. Shishido is here. Shishido is  _here_. Quick, ask him. Ask him, now, before Shishido suddenly has to leave or before something happens and all he can do is watch Shishido walk away a second time. He wants to touch Shishido. Nothing… overt. Just his shoulder or bicep to assure himself that this is real, that he's here and that he's really getting a second chance at this.

Instead he watches Shishido stomp his laundry into the machine, noting the curve of his back even under the thick coat he's got on.


End file.
